The Sadness settled on me Christmas night.
It had been a truly blessed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day filled with friends, my mother and my partner – our first Christmas together. There was cooking and food and naps and alcohol and great conversation. There was a service and a campfire and live music. It was, in the words of my boyfriend, magical.
Nothing could have made it better.
Nothing, and yet everything.
Leave everything as it was, only add a dozen more or so people. And not just any people. The people.
This is the pain of the holidays threaded through the joy. It’s the shell of what was that lurks in the mental background. While not in the forefront, the pain is a haunting.
When the meal was over and the kitchen cleaned and the house was quiet and it was just him and I and the dogs, the Sadness that been dancing in the shadows emerged.
I told him, slowly at first, my face pressed against his chest. He couldn’t see the first tears fall. He’s known about the Sadness, but he’s never seen it. Not many people do. Partly because of logistics – I’m usually alone when it strikes – and partly (mostly?) because I don’t want to be that emotionally exposed to anyone.
But he unpacks those places, even the ones I’ve forgotten about and the ones I don’t want to choose to remember.
He asks questions and lets me find the answers.
And when my words come out in halting sentences, he lets the silence linger and he pulls me closer.
Sometimes I’m not good at this.
This risky business of unpacking, sorting, repacking.
The greater the risk, the greater the intimacy. I’ve been told this.
Still, I’m not always a willing participant.
Sometimes my Ego screams for a retreat. It’s the 2-year-old hanging onto the doorframe of a room it doesn’t want to leave, its legs dangling over the arms of the patient parent holding it.
That patient parent is the wisdom in me who knows that risk begets intimacy; vulnerability is daring greatly, it’s showing up, it’s playing hard.
It’s often not my first choice. {screaming, tantrum-throwing 2-year-old}
It’s my most liberating choice. {wise patient parent}
I told him about The Sadness. It’s here.
The first tears fell.
This might get messy.
Then more.
He’s going to see.
And more.
He can feel them soaking his shirt.
Vulnerability seeped out of me. Tears. Snot.
He asked me what the day would have been like.
I told him.
There would have been laughing and jokes and smart-ass wit.
“They made me a funnier person.”
There would have been communal cooking and special recipes and traditions.
“We just wanted to be together.”
There would have been card games and day long tournaments.
“We’d play the best out of 3 and then the best 3 out of 6 sets.”
There would have been conversations and plan-making and gossiping.
“She’d always oversleep and wouldn’t help. We bitched about it.”
Mainly there would’ve been together-ness.
“We just loved to be together.”
I paused the scene. Tears. Snot.
I whisper: “Will it always feel this way?”
Silence lingered. It’s a space I’m grateful for. There’s no rush to wisdom; no cliché response or heroic effort to fill the void – just the words, tears, snot and a couple characters holding each other in a story of sometimes-tragic proportions. He held onto me until I’d popped enough blood vessels in my eyeballs and until I needed a break.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, my soul had the answer.
Yes, it will always feel this way.
Within the abundance of joy, the shadows of what was will remain, dancing in the background, flirting around the fringes. Remember? Do you remember? Do you feel us?
Yes, I always will, because you are not just a memory. You are the ones I have loved the most fiercely; you are the ones I won’t get over. You are part of me.
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